Archive for the ‘Christian’ Category

Anyone that has had exposure to the Christian religion is aware of Satan and his prominence throughout the bible. Recently, while studying the bible, I have been examining some of Satan’s attempts to thwart the plan of God and I believe I have stumbled across an example where Satan may have missed one of the links and prophecies pointing to the birth of the Messiah. I am starting to become convinced that Satan missed this link because the Holy Spirit excluded it from the official record (the Torah), though I think historical record and a little circumstantial evidence proves my point.

From the standpoint of mankind, Satan is an ultra powerful supernatural being. The bible tells how Satan is an angel and we know from reading the scriptures that angels can wipe out scores of thousands of humans in one fell swoop (read 2Kings 19:35 where an angel slew 185,000 Assyrians one night). However, that being said, Satan is a creation and is not a god and has limitations. We read from the very beginning of the bible to the very end that Satan has attempted to destroy the lineage and the path of the Judean royal line to prevent Christ from being able to reign upon David’s throne and to claim the title of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Satan is an ultra powerful being but he is not all-knowing and uses the holy word of our Lord as a prime source of knowledge to plan his attacks upon the royal line. Obviously, God knows and understands this, but adds the information to the scriptures knowing Satan will use it in whatever manner he can to thwart the plan of salvation.

I believe that Satan missed having the knowledge of watching for the precise signs to point to the location and the time of the birth of The Christ and I feel this information that led the “wise men” to find the Messiah came directly from Daniel, a book that details an historical storyline that I feel is extremely cool. You will find many links and article and posts about the possible history of the Magi that showed up in Jerusalem, but I know of no one else that has my viewpoint as to why they showed up (the reason for this simply could be that I haven’t looked hard enough)…

As a child, knowing the story of Christ’s birth, I always wondered who these guys called the Magi (or wise men) were. I would ask, but all anyone that I asked could say was they were wise men from the east and they would leave it at that I was always left unsatisfied with these answers, so let’s look a little deeper.

Historical research indicates that the Magi were members of the Medeo-Persian Priesthood1 and we find that Daniel was chief of this priesthood according to Daniel chapter 4. Daniel 4:9 “Belteshazzar2, chief of the magicians, because I know that the Spirit of the Holy God [is] in you, and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and its interpretation. (NKJV) This scripture tells us Daniel held the office over these magicians to the court of Darius, the ruler of the world. At that time in history, Daniel was probably the second or third most powerful man in the world.

We also read in Daniel 6 the familiar story of the lion’s den. After Daniel leaves the lion’s den and is found unharmed, King Darius created a decree that was written and sent to all the nations of the earth stating that all nations under his rule must fear and reverence the God of Daniel (Daniel 6:25-28). These scriptures seem to me to set up a series of conditions that gave Daniel the ability to spread the influence of the God of Israel and the specific date prophecy he would receive about Christ in Daniel chapter 9. These conditions cited in the scripture indicate a link to the appearance of the Magi that appear unannounced (which creates much consternation and fear in Herod3) bringing gifts for the newborn Messiah in the gospels and to me, it is one of those events where the bible implies a Messianic prophecy that didn’t make it out of the Holy Spirit’s editing room for us to read, though Daniel seemingly knew the specifics of it and it seems he taught his dedicated followers to pass on this prophecy down through the centuries to their successors. Remember, Gabriel gave Daniel the specific day Christ would present himself as the Messiah and was told he would be crucified, and it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume he gave him a specific prophecy of the birth of our Savior also…kept out of the official record so Satan would be taken by surprise.

So what happened? The fact that five hundred years later this imposing procession of important foreigners (Magi from Parthia4) suddenly shows up at Herod’s doorstep in Jerusalem while following a special star5 and looking for the new born king of God’s chosen people, means they had to be there following some precise instructions, and the fact they were descendants of the Median Magi priesthood that was under the leadership of Daniel the prophet several centuries earlier, even though their nation worshiped strange gods, screams direct linkage to me.

Where am I going with this? My personal opinion is that Satan is totally familiar with the Holy Word and knows every word, every nuance, every prophecy, every covenant, every commandment and every screw-up of the Israelites in there. My thought is that this prophecy that guided Daniel to instruct the Magi to pass the prophecy down through their ranks from generation to generation was missed by Satan because it was left out of the record, causing him to ignore these pagan priests that are conveying the message of the expectation of a Jewish Messiah appearing under certain miraculous conditions to their following successions of priests. OK, if that’s true, why was it left out? We could throw out conjectures all day, but I believe this visit by the Magi gives us an indication, on a much smaller scale, of what celebrations should have been taking place in Israel if the Jews had paid attention to prophecy and had known to look for the Messiah, is one possibility. Another possibility is their visit was an end-run around Satan’s deception campaign, which in part, was designed to prevent such an announcement to be heralded, but the Magi succeeded at announcing to the Jewish leadership that the Messiah and king was among them. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two thoughts. Regardless whatever could have happened, the Jewish leadership were, once again, asleep at the wheel and ignored this event, which is only one of the most important events this creation has ever witnessed, and the single event that started the clock for the greatest love story ever lived, and the purpose of the creation.

Because Christ as the Messiah was rejected by the nation of Israel, The Lord turned his back on them as prophesied throughout the Torah, (Hosea’s prophecy is my favorite) which resulted in the catastrophe in 70 AD and the diaspora6 of the Jews.

I have a non-traditional view of the scripture, according to many of my acquaintances, so in my mind’s eye, I see God discussing with the others in the Trinity over steaming cups of nectar, his script for our universe before zapping us into existence. We all know what happened…Lucifer (who had become the Satan) threw a wrench into the works, apparently causing the Lord to rewrite the script of our complicated SIM game7, so to speak, even though I feel our Lord set up Satan so he would cause his own fall because of Satan’s addiction to the real killer, pride. I am always looking for patterns and, I guess conspiracies and one pattern that I see is; after the Jews turned chicken and refused to invade Canaan the first time, The Lord sent them wandering for thirty eight years before they were allowed to occupy the land. Fast-forward several hundred years and we have the Jewish nation reject God again by rejecting His Son. Thirty eight years later, the Romans destroyed the temple and massacred over a million Jews in the process of the siege and occupation of Jerusalem. I can’t help but wonder if this was simply a modified script from the original one I had imagined above, one where possibly the Jews accepted him and thirty eight years later, the chosen people, with Christ as their King, started the rule of the earth from Zion. Just as they had captured and occupied the promised land so many years ago.

In hindsight, we can look back and think, “what dorks, these guys had these prophecies about the Messiah, mainly the one from Daniel chapter nine, right there in front of them and they ignored it and see what it got them.”. Before we get all holier-than-thou, we need to look at ourselves. Heck, forget religion, here in America, our leaders ignore and reject our own constitution, they reject moral judgments and teachings, much less the teaching of the scriptures and we’ve only had a couple hundred years to do it in. At least Israel seemed to hold it together a few hundred years longer than that.

7 I personally think we are some sort of giant SIM game where our reality is all smoke and mirrors and the real reality is what we refer to as the ‘spirit world’. The apostle Paul supports that view in Ephesians 6:12

While still practicing polytheism, I discovered the God of Israel and Christianity via Chuck Missler audio books that were given to me by a cousin and I became fascinated by the Missler Beyondseries. I subsequently added this Judea/Christian God to my list of gods I would honor, placing Him kind of at the “Big Kahuna” level. I thought this was adequate, sort of hedging my bets, so to speak. I later found out after I turned to Him in desperation concerning a three decade addiction and He immediately responded and saved me (being the only god that had ever interacted to me in an entirely positive way) and I started reading His Book. Placing Him at the top of my list of gods, I subsequently discovered, after reading more of this fascinating tome of His, was not adequate in the least and was actually insulting to the Christian God, as I found out when I read in the first commandment in Exodus chapter twenty.

My Lord has forgiven me of my past and has brought me into His fold, but recently I started wondering about the whole concept of strange gods from the aspect of the biblical standpoint. An example I will start with is a well known Christian entity that is the face of Christianity to most of the world…the Catholic Church. In no way am I trying to bash Catholicism here (they just came to mind as an example), and I will be the first to admit that I do not fully understand their religion, but I still have questions from what I do know from looking about as well as reading about their beliefs.

Jesus said in John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (NKJV)

I am familiar with some of the medals and pendants that the Catholics sell with Saint this and Saint that designed for the recipients to pray to for protection from various specific things, and I am slightly familiar with the rosary beads that are used in conjunction with a rote prayer to Mary, mother of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but John 14:6 seems pretty clear and succinct and all the icons of saints to hold and pray to and prayers to mother Mary are prayers to strange gods, are they not? It seems to me that those that use icons of this person and that person for protection and those that pray to Mary are, by their actions, saying that Christ as our intercessor is not adequate.

However, if I am to be honest I also have to look inward and use the same ruler on myself that I am willing to use on others. So, what about myself? Am I better than this institution I just mentioned, or am I simply casting stones from my own glass house?

I do admit, I prayed to strange gods for better than two decades without a lot of positive results and it seems that I am not alone. Apparently most of the nation of Israel, including the priests, prayed to strange gods in the form of Teraphim for most of their history, prompting the very first commandment; Thou shalt have no other gods before me…but they persisted.

I, as well as most of the people alive today, have even more of the scriptures before us than the original sons of God and with our instant and mobile information at out fingertips, it is more readily available than at any other time in history, so there should be no worry about having access to the Word of our Lord…that’s correct, isn’t it? You would think that we would have fewer strange gods in out lives because of this instant and wonderful access to the throne of God…unfortunately, that is not the case.

I still have to constantly sweep for Teraphim and strange gods in my life. I feel it is the basic nature of corrupt humanity to elevate ourselves and rely upon our own strengths, instead of turning to the actual strong shoulders in our lives. Whenever a hard burden has been placed upon my shoulders and I reactively and almost instantly take it on and try to pridefully muscle my way through the burden instead of allowing God to take it away from me.

The question I have to ask myself is, am I rejecting My Lord and rejecting His help that He promised, therefore perhaps elevating myself to a status equal to His own? Am I sort of making myself a strange god, trusting in my own worth and spirit instead of my Father? Christ quoted from the Psalms (Psalm 82:6) when He threw this accusation of making themselves “gods” at the Pharisees in John 10:34 (Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?). Yeah, unfortunately, I believe I have to admit that I think that may be the case…and that is a very scary thought. Allowing strange gods into our lives is a very easy thing to do…getting rid of them is much, much harder.

I believe the Antichrist (I John 2:22), (which mean instead of Christ or opposed to Christ in the Greek1), is the most popular title of the most famous tool of Satan, as well as Satan’s last hurrah in his vain attempt to thwart the final outcome of the world (as he is referred to in the the first and second epistles of John) is possibly alive today.

If the Profane and Wiked Prince of Israel (Ezekiel 21:25-27) is a natural born human being, he would have to be alive and ready at a moments notice, to perform the role that has been mentioned throughout the bible of the Coming World Leader2 outlined for us in the scriptures. I conceivably picture the Man of Sin (II Thessalonians 2:13) (or as he is referred to in Latin, the ‘Vicar of Christ‘3, which opens up a whole new can of worms), as a type of ‘sleeper agent’ ready to activate at a moment’s notice because the scriptures say Christ will return ‘as a thief in the night’ to those who are unprepared for his coming, as we are told in I Thessalonians 5:2-44. The most popular word for the The Enemy (Psalms 55:3) is derived from 1 John chapters 2 & 4. I believe in chapter 2:18-19 where he mentions plural antichrists he is referring to people that learned of Christ but rejected Him or, through the spirit of Satan, pretended to believe and chose to intermingle with them but for the purpose of sowing discord and disinformation about Our Lord. It is a couple of chapters later we find the popular reference to Satan’s man which I think John is using as another title to the Head over many countries (Psalms 110:6) in I John 4:1-35.

Satan doesn’t know what the interval is between the harpazo6 and the beginning of the seventieth week7 is, so Satan has to have his Spoiler (Isaiah 16:4) ready and waiting in the wings to strike at anytime. Satan has had to have had this Branch of the terrible ones (Isaiah 25:5) ready throughout every generation since the sixty nine weeks were fulfilled, if the unclean spirit (Matthew 12:43) is human. For that to happen the Son of Perdition (II Thessalonians 2:13) has to be alive now. This means that Satan has needed to have his Man of the Earth (Psalms 10:18) ready to act when the time comes. Or does he?

I think there is another scenario that we need to consider. There is a possibility that the Man of lawlessness (II Thessalonians 2:13 NIV) will be one of the stars that fell (fallen angels) as we are told in Revelation 12:4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. (KJV) and he will just ‘appear’ on the scene. It says a third of the stars (which is a typical idiom for angels) go with Satan. All throughout the bible there have been visitations by angels that spoke, visited and dined with people mentioned in Hebrews 13:2Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (KJV). Why should these visitations be limited to only the ‘good’ angels. Possibly the false teachers and plural antichrists that John mentions could be these fallen angels sent to disrupt and sow discord and confusion as we see in 1 John 2:18-198. This may be a thought that could be worth cultivating and researching.

Is the Antichrist a Jew? After all, The Prince who is to come will enforce (or confirm) the covenant concerning the temple in Jerusalem for seven years9. I could do additional research and bring forth viable arguments both ways and cite Revelations where it speaks of the Adversary (Lamentations 4:11-12) enforcing the covenant with Israel, I could cite Daniel 11:37 that states he will reject the God of his fathers, There are those that put forth articles saying this is a bunch of anti-Semitic rantings, but let’s allow Christ to settle the argument. Christ says in John 5:42-44 about the Jews in the end times that they will receive the Violent ManPsalms 140:110. I believe that Christ is saying the Jews will receive this Idol Shepard (Zechariah 11:16-17) as a false messiah as prophesied in Deuteronomy 18:15-2211, so will he be (is he) a Jew? I really have no idea, so I will defer to Christ’s authority on this one (and all of the rest, also).

4 I Thessalonians 5:2-4 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. (KJV)

5 I John 4:1-3 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the [spirit] of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. (NKJV)

8 1 John 2:18-19 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would [no doubt] have continued with us: but [they went out], that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (KJV)

10Psalms 140:1But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that [cometh] from God only? (KJV)

11Deuteronomy 18:15-22The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; According to all that thou desiredst of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the LORD said unto me, They have well [spoken that] which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require [it] of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. (KJV)

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While studying the book of Hebrews, which was primarily written to the Jews, I started thinking about the problem the Jewish believers faced in the first century and I took a look at the dilemma that the Jewish people found themselves confronted with from the teachings of the author of the book of Hebrews (which I believe to be Paul). Part of the issue covered by the writer of Hebrews in his instructions and lessons to the Jews about Christianity concerned their predicament about the Old Covenant and also about the Temple that was still standing in Jerusalem (the book of Hebrews was written about 68 AD while the temple was still standing.).

I believe part of the Jewish quandary with what was being taught to them by the Hebrew writer was that all Jews were raised and taught and instructed from a child that the Temple was the Holy Place of their Lord. They probably knew about the Messiah and were anticipating him but most likely most of them had no conception that the Messiah was to totally overturn and upset their whole religious system. Historically the evidence seems to support just the opposite, that most Jewish people were expecting a Messiah that would come swooping in and save them from the oppressive hand of the Roman rulers that had dominion over these proud Jewish people. This attitude reflects the great distance that the Jewish leadership had veered from the actual meaning and intention of the word of God in the Torah that they had before them.

The concept of taking and turning their backs on a part of life that they had grown up with, a religious system that was the linchpin around which their lives revolved, a religion that had been hammered into them so deeply it was an ingrained part of their life and was a daily, weekly and seasonally practiced and sometimes a legally required ritual would be difficult for the devout Jew to accept. If what these followers of Christ were saying and teaching was correct, they were expected to believe that the covenant that God had handed down through Moses and that was exemplified by the beautiful temple standing in Jerusalem was no longer in effect and was being replaced by a new covenant that had no temple. Additionally the fact that their respected teachers and leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees, were disparaging Christians and constantly throwing stumbling block and sowing doubt and confusion about this cult of heretics among the regular populace while persecuting anyone that started professing belief in the chief heretic called Jesus Christ had to cause a lot of anxiety among the Christian Jews. All these things would create a situation that would be akin to selling an ice box to an Eskimo and would require some extraordinary salesmen…God had such super salesmen such as Paul, Barnabas, Titus, Philemon, Peter, James and Jude, as well as others…even then it was a tough sell as we read in these epistles.

To accept and believe in the Christ and this new movement called The Way1 was possibly a guarantee of being looked upon with derision and possibly ostracized by your community leaders while the threat of persecution or death would be looming above the believers like the sword of Damocles. We need to remember that first century Christians met in homes and private areas, partially to try and escape prosecution because they feared for their lives. To a degree, it may not have mattered that the Torah from beginning to the end was a giant road-map full of prophecies and guide posts pointing toward Christ the Messiah. Or that the Messiah had been among them and had been executed upon that cruel tree by their leaders, because knowledge to all this information relied on access. While most of the population of the world was illiterate, I believe Judea would have had a much smaller percentage of illiteracy. However, even if a large percentage of the populace may have been literate, copies of the Torah were expensive and therefore, few and far between so the people would rely on the Rabbis and leaders of the local Synagogs for their information and inspiration and interpretation of the scriptures. In today’s world we have a tendency to hold our Pastors and Ministers in high esteem…be they right or be they wrong (why do you think there are so many blasted denominations?) why should the first century Jews be any different? On top of all this we need to remember it would have been common knowledge that all of the original disciples of Christ were martyred, tortured and killed except for John the beloved, by the Jewish leadership. No wonder first century Jews had a difficult time keeping the faith. What’s our excuse?

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Have you ever thought about what language God used to speak to Adam and Eve? How about when the Trinity speak amongst themselves, what language do they use? Have you wondered what language that Adam and Eve spoke between themselves, or about what language Satan used to speak to Eve and what language Adam and Eve taught their children?

If you listen to scientists and archaeologist, you would learn that they probably grunted, snapped, spit, and growled out unintelligible sounds while beating the ground with sticks and dragging their knuckles as the walked…not the same picture we read about in the scriptures, is it? I wonder which is correct…God’s view or mankind’s view of our past…I think I’ll go with God’s view.

We read in Genesis chapter 11 that all the earth spoke the same tongue until after the flood where we learn that the grandson of Ham, a chap named Nimrod, really developed some great ideas and went forth conquering and building cites and before you knew it, he had built the first world empire, apparently centered, in the land of Shinar1 (later known as Babylonia…for reasons we will quickly discover). Nimrod had some outlandish delusions of grandeur and also in Genesis chapter 11 we find that he and his followers decided to build a tower to heaven…not only to build a tower, but the greatest and most lofty tower ever and to populate the earth and basically spread the word that Nimrod, and not The Lord, is the greatest (makes you wonder who Nimrod’s hero was…it certainly wasn’t The Lord). He and his followers sought to elevate themselves to a higher and greater level than the Creator (it certainly sounds like Satan was behind this and it also sounds like what is going on today, doesn’t it?). This shows human nature is perpetually self-elevating since Satan appeared on the scene, hawking his snake oil and influence upon humankind and sin was produced as a result…anyway…later in Genesis 11 we find that they built the Tower of Babel which is the root of the word Babylonia and babel also is a word meaning confusion.

The bible tells us God came down down and visited Babel and that God caused Nimrods people to all start speaking unintelligible tongues to each other, therefore stopping Nimrod’s plan in his tracks. If you study the text carefully you will discover that the people that were affected by this were primarily the descendants of Ham (Nimrod’s father, Cush was the son of Ham and the grandson of Noah). Genesis 11:9 implies to me that those that were in this area were scattered and suddenly they could not only not understand each other, but by default, they also wouldn’t be able to understand the language of their relatives in other areas and those only one generation older, the other sons of Noah; Shem and Japath.

Fast forward a few hundred years and we find The Lord choosing Abram as the root of a family and later a nation that the Lord creates as His children, a nation he called after the God-given name of one of Abram’s descendants, Jacob, which God called Israel (at least when he was being good…). Abram’s ancestor was Shem and he came from an area, that I believe, wasn’t affected by the dispersion of language…in other words, I believe that the language of Abram was the language of Noah and the language of Adam…Hebrew2.

Why do I think this? There are indicators, one of which is Hebrew is one of the more precise languages ever known. What else?

Hebrew is one of the only languages known that have numerical values ascribed to the letters. This allows fast, easy and accurate copies of the text to be made…if the numerical value of the page being copied and the numerical value of the page where the text is copied to match, then it assures accuracy.

Hebrew is the base language of the only language system where the letter not only creates an arbitrary sound that speaker and listener agree to, but the shape of the letter also looks like the object that is the base meaning behind the letter. Therefore it is one of the easiest languages to learn.

Hebrew is the language The Lord chose as the language of His people…do you think they spoke Hebrew just by chance, when we learn that there is nothing in the bible by chance? I don’t think so.

What about Greek, the language of the New Covenant, which also is very precise, which also has numerical values attached to the letters and both these factors afford a precision which helps eradicates ambiguities of the text. Personally, I haven’t wanted to take the time to research the root of Greek, but because exhibits many of the same qualities as Hebrew, I strongly suspect as we dig deeper, we will find God’s hand was right there creating this language that is also used to convey His precious and very coolly important word.

God Bless, Jim

P.S after I had written most of my theory, I discovered it is old hat to some, for I stumbled across this neat website that says basically the same thing I thought of…burst my bubble will ya…

2 There is a form of Hebrew called Ugaritic that has been discovered in some very ancient writings in an area of what we know of as Canaan. In itself, it offers some additional insights to biblical Hebrew, but there are those that attempt to use it to discredit the bible. Ugaritic and Hebrew are similar languages that are derived from a common root, just as Spanish and Italian are similar languages because the are both derivatives of a common root, Latin.

I know I probably can’t do this justice, but I decided to tackle some subject matter that highly interest me and the patterns that they seem to represent. This subject covers the time between the creation and the Flood of Noah, and deals with some controversial beings called the Nephilim. To those that have no idea what Nephilim are…here’s a link to start with (there are many, many more references that could be cited, but this will start your investigation) http://www.nwcreation.net/nephilim.html

I wish to begin this topic with some patterns I see represented in the bible. In my mind, I feel that the Nephilim represent Satan and sin, and that Enoch represents the saved children of God and Noah represents the remnant being saved from the judgment of an evil, unrepentant world. So, let’s see if I can tie these thoughts and patterns together.

I like patterns. I look for patterns to assist me with understanding and remembering thoughts, items and concepts whether at work or at home. Therefore, I see patterns within the scriptures that I believe were intentionally woven into the fabric of the Holy Word to allow us to tie events and concepts together for our edification, our remembrance and our worship. The Holy Spirit tells us in Romans that Adam was a model, or a type for Jesus.

Romans 5:14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (NKJV)

I remember when I first read this I thought, “hold on, how in the world is Adam, who fell, like Christ?”. I owe the clarification of this comment to Chuck Missler who explained it in one of the 40,000 recordings he has made (OK, maybe not 40,000, but he has made a lot of fascinating instructional and inspirational recordings…). He explained it this way; Eve was deceived by Satan and because of this deception she choose to defy God, Adam, knowing he would suffer along with her, (God told them they would die) made the conscious decision to stay with her, therefore taking on her sin, similar to how Christ chose to come and take on our sin. When explained this way, the connection between Adam and Christ makes perfect sense.

OK, so we know that the scriptures are full of patterns and types for us to look for and digest, so we can understand the meanings of them and apply the meaning to our lives. Lets look at a few that I feel tie together the Nephilim, Enoch and the Flood.

1stPattern…The Nephilim. I learned in history class about Greek and Roman gods. It seemed each and every one had superhuman strengths, they were huge imposing creatures that struck fear in the hearts of mere mortals, similar to the superheros that we read about in comic books or watch on the silver screen. When I was a kid I never would have imagined that the basis of these legends had their root in the history of mankind and was recorded in the Word of God. Genesis, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Joshua, Samuel, Chronicles and Ezekiel1 most have references to these aberrant humans that were the result of the union of fallen angels2 and human females. It is very easy to infer from looking at the Hebrew meaning of the passages that the genetic code of all the offspring and their descendants would have been altered, corrupting the purity (or perfection) of the DNA of the children of the Lord (which would eventually become the Israelites) if they had been allowed to intermingle. I feel this was an early attempt by the original adversary, Satan, to corrupt the DNA code of man and prevent the future birth of the perfect human, Christ. For this reason the only way to accurately insure that corruption of the line didn’t happen would have been to reformat the Earth, so to speak…hence, Noah.

2ndPattern…While all this attempt to corrupt the human genomes by Satan though the Nephilim was taking place around the globe, there was a seventh generation descendant of Adam named Enoch that we are told in Genesis 5:22 and again in verse 24 walked with God for three hundred years after the birth of his son, Methuselah at the age of sixty five. There is a Jewish tradition that Enoch was born on the 6th of Sivan3 which is the Jewish Feast of Weeks, or as we know it, the Day of Pentecost and we are told in Genesis 5:24 that three hundred sixty-five years later the Lord took him, or translated him, and according to Jewish tradition, he was translated also on his birthday (what a present!). The parallel between Enoch and the Church jumps right out at me…both were ‘born’ on Pentecost, Enoch was born amid a world of decay and corruption but found favor with God and followed his commandments and so subsequently God snatched Enoch from the sin and corruption of the world before he destroyed it. We are told in I Thessalonians 14:16 and 17 that the Church will be caught up to be with the Lord, just like Enoch was.

3rdPattern…The days of Noah were dim days indeed for the Earth. Satan had, successfully it seemed, corrupted the line of man with the Nephilim so the birth of a pure Lord born of the line of David wouldn’t be able to take place. Genesis 6 speaks of this tale of woe where starting with verse two the Holy Spirit tells us that Sons of God (‘ĕlôhı̂ym)4 came down to co-mingle and produce offspring with the daughters of man (‘âdâm)4 and the product of those unions were the Nephilim, or ‘giants’ as the modern translations render them. Primarily because of this corruption of the human race, God decided to destroy life on the Earth. However, Genesis 6:8 is a short but very sweet verse to our ears because it simply says but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (KJV). Because Noah found favor with the Lord and his gene pool was pure (or perfect), The Lord chose to keep Noah, his family and male and female of all flesh safe from destruction as he wiped the impure seed of Satan’s attempt at destruction of the race of man from the face of the Earth. What are the lessons to be learned from Noah? Noah is a model of the remnant of the Children of Israel as we see in Isaiah 11:11, Jeremiah 23:3, Ezekiel 11:17, Micah 2:12 and Romans 9:27 which will be protected and saved from the judgment of the Earth by fire, just as the Flood was a judgment of the Earth by water.

As we look at the history of mankind before the flood, we see that the patterns there are exemplar to the history of mankind after the flood. Perhaps we should really take a close look at the lessons God has laid out for us and dig deep to find the gems and jewels of information hidden beneath the surface of these first chapters of the Book of Genesis.

God Bless, Jim

P.S. While researching this I came across some interesting websites pointing to the Book of Enoch. Apparently it was discovered that the Ethiopians weren’t highly influenced by the Early Church leaders thus their bibles retain some characteristics of some of the early canons before the Early Church Fathers did their editing, resulting in the Book of Enoch being included in their scriptures. Supposedly the passages that Jude quotes about Enoch’s prophecies in Jude 14 are found there implying that he was familiar with the text. Also fragments of the Book of Enoch are included in the Dead Sea Scroll remains and, if we can believe the carbon 14 dating, these copies were ascribed around 200 BC. It seems most scholars believe the Book of Enoch was not written by Enoch himself, but it retains a good enough pedigree, that a healthy biblical library maybe should include one as historical reference. The Book of Enoch was translated from the Ethiopian text in 1906. Here is one interesting website: http://exodus2006.com/ENOCH.HTM

2 fallen angels = sons of God. All of the earliest writings, as well as the Kaballah refer to sons of God as angels. It wasn’t until the 2nd century AD did a reference to sons of Seth appear in the writings of an early church father, Augustine. To consider the sons of God as righteous men, doesn’t really play in my mind as the scriptures tell us that the offspring of this union were giants, or when you look at Strongs definition (H5303) they were not only giants, but were tyrants, bullys. You may have some children that are badly behaved, but to have aberrant offspring, there has to be something else in play, other than human to human unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_God

With the volatile Middle East all over the news lately, I have recently become interested in the historical links between the conquest of Canaan and the surrounding area today and so I decided to do a little research.

We learn in the bible about the covenants the Lord has made with His firstborn children, the children of Israel. We also read about how there are several places mentioned in the scriptures in reference to the Jews and the conquest of Canaan, the promised land, where the Israelites fell short of doing what God commanded them to do whenever they were sent to attack and conquer the land of Canaan. Let us take a quick look at these areas and see what we can glean from the price the Jews have paid for the lack of completing what The Lord commanded them to do…to kill and conquer and to not take hostages in the battles for these areas.

First, let’s look at the region of Bashan of the bible. A major city in the region of Bashan is Golan. We know the area today as the Golan Heights with Golan still as the major city of this hill country. Og of the Amorites was one the major king of the area during Joshua’s time and as you recall, Joshua didn’t utterly wipe out all the Amorites, these highland mountaineers are described as powerful people of great stature, “like the height of the cedars”1. In fact, Joshua got duped by the Gibeonites, a branch of the Amorites, into signing a treaty with them, against advice, and later The Lord ended up punishing His people for not honoring this ill-fated treaty when Saul killed a bunch of the Gibeonites and King David had to decide which punishment the Israelites would receive in 2 Samuel chapter 21. It may have been a horrible treaty, but this is an example that shows The Lord always honors His treaties and covenants.

Next, lets look at Hebron2. During the time of Joshua and the Canaan conquests, Hebron was under the control of three sons of Anak who was considered a descendant of the Nephilim (Numbers 13:33) and also referred to as Rephaite3 (Rephaim) Anak is also linked to the name Anax in Greek mythology which was a king of giants and considered about 18 feet tall.4 Today, Hebron is the largest city in The West Bank.

OK, how about Gaza…Gaza is located along the western coast of Canaan (Israel) bordering Egypt and after Joshua and the tribe of Judah failed to completely eliminate all the Anakim (Nephilim) from here, as well as Gath and Ashdod, and the rest of the the area as they were directed (as we read about in Joshua 11:22), it became a major city of the Philistines and remained a major thorn in the side of the Jews all through the book of Judges. Gaza happened to have been the city where Samson pulled the temple down around him in Judges 16:21.

A couple more…

Gath was the hometown of Goliath

Ashdod is another coastal city near Gaza and was the city of Philistia where the Ark of the Covenant was taken and it kept pulling down the statue of Dagon, night after night…too bad they didn’t have video cameras…it would have been a fantastic thing to watch…

What do all these areas have in common? They are all locations within Canaan where Joshua was ordered by the Lord to utterly destroy the kingdoms within the land of Canaan. I used to have problems with apparent cruelty of Our Lord to kill not only the soldiers, but the women and children of these nations within the borders of Canaan until I studied about the nephilim and I realized the purpose behind the orders (destroy all signs of the corruption of the human genome). I truly feel because they didn’t fully carry out the orders of The Lord’s commandment and utterly destroy their enemies that lived in the above strongholds four thousand years ago. The Israelites are discovering that the dweller of the areas are once again a major thorn in the side of God’s people. I believe there is more to this than just the failure to eradicate all traces of the nephilim. We have found from the bible that demons are territorial and the failure to wipe out the races of the nephilim within their borders also meant that whatever demons (demons would be a study in its own right) Satan also planted in those areas are most likely still there doing their bidding for their master, just as they would have in the Bronze Age when Joshua fell short of fully obeying The Lord. The results we read about in the papers on a daily basis.